Hank Williams: the lighter side of the godfather of country

Williams lived fast and died young but in 1951 he was able to do radio broadcasts at 7.15am, where the wisecracking improvisor showed his mastery of music

By now youd think we know everything there is to know about Hank Williams. He had a short life, dying New Years Day 1953 aged 29 in the back of a car parked at a gas station in rural Virginia. Three years earlier he had made his debut on the Grand Ole Opry, launching a body of work that would serve as one of the definitive blueprints of modern country music. A definitive box set in 1998 claimed to house every note Williams sang.

Not so fast. This month marks the reissue of a 15-CD set called The Complete Mothers Best Collection … Plus! unveiling 142 lost performances by the country music star in an unvarnished setting as the featured performer of an early morning radio program in 1951. The recordings, rescued from acetates salvaged in the 1970s and the center of a 10-year legal battle, contradict the image of a doomed and self-destructive country singer known for harrowing fare like Im So Lonesome I Could Cry, Your Cheatin Heart, and Ill Never Get Out of This World Alive.

On these records, Williams is a wisecracking improviser at the height of his musical powers with an encyclopedic brain for gospel hymns, traditional folk ballads, childrens songs and anything else a rural listener in the Tennessee region might want to hear in the early 1950s from one of the biggest country stars of the day.

He is singing like his life depends on it, says Jett Williams, the daughter of the late singer. You can hear the freedom in his voice because its not in a recording studio. This was just get around the mic, let it rip and have fun.

The story of the recordings is long and tortuous. Les Leverett, a former station photographer for WSM, is credited for salvaging the recordings from the garbage after the station had moved offices in 1961. He held onto them for years and then sold them to Hillous Butrum, bassist in the Drifting Cowboys but who had left the band in 1950, one year before music on the acetates had been recorded.

They were copied to tape in 1981. One year later the tapes ended up in the hands of Legacy Entertainment Group, a Texas company that Williams said lifted her fathers vocals and match them to new music. Polygram, parent company of MGM Records, Williams former record label, claimed it owned the exclusive rights of the performances and sued. In April 2000, the court dismissed Polygrams claims, saying its 1947 contract with the singer did not apply to recordings never intended for commercial release.

Listening to the discs reveals Williams as sweetly charming and also a prankster. His wife and occasional duet partner Audrey Williams sings with him and their interaction teasing and playful is more poignant knowing their tumultuous backstory. Audrey dedicates her self-penned song Tight Wad Daddy to her husband. The couple would divorce the following year.

The shows were for Mothers Best, a flour company in northern Alabama, Williamss home state. The show followed a simple formula: Williams opened with Lovesick Blues, followed by banter with show announcer Cousin Louie Buck. Then, in-between scripted commercials aimed at housewives, Williams performed two more songs, the last always a spiritual. That song selection is why music historians consider the shows so valuable. Many of these are early live recordings of Williamss best-known songs, made shortly after their studio versions and not well known to audiences. He also presents songs, like Alabama Waltz, which he wrote but never recorded. Then there are favorites of his written by other people, such as Have I Told You Lately That I Love You by Scotty Wiseman of National Barn Dance fame or Precious Lord, Take My Hand by Chicago gospel great Thomas Dorsey.

Williams says the shows brought her closer to her father, whom she never met. Before playing the traditional song On Top of Old Smoky, for instance, Hank ad libs that he will sing the version his grandmother sang to him before bedtime. Now I can imagine my dad as a little boy, she says. The song selection, she says, tells me what kind of music he liked and what he listened to and who he respected.

Jett Williams has a story that could be a country song itself. She was born to Bobbie Jett, a woman her father had an affair with between his two marriages. Jett gave birth to their daughter five days after Williams died and not long after he had married his second wife. Her father had established a custody agreement for his daughter, naming his mother as sole custodian in the wake of his death. But three years later, Jetts grandmother died and she ended up in the states foster care system. It wasnt until she was 21 that her adoptive parents told her the identity of birth father and it took until 1987 for a circuit court in Montgomery, Alabama, to officially establish the bloodline. She then had to fight Hank Williams Jr to be recognized as a legal heir to their fathers estate; the Alabama supreme court ruled in her favor in 1989.

Williams, who is a co-producer of the Mothers Best collection, has taken a lead role in promoting her fathers legacy. A few years ago she brought another set of radio recordings from 1950 titled The Garden Spot Programs to Omnivore, the reissue label lauded for packages by Big Star and Dr John, among others. The set <a href=”http://theboot.com/hank-williams-the-garden-spot-programs-named-best-historical-album-2015-grammy-awards/” data-link-name=”in” body link” class=”u-underline”>won a best historical album Grammy last year.

She continues to scout for more acetate discs that detoured from the local landfill but have festered in basements, attics or storage lockers. I feel like a steward. I tell people if you find anything, dont play it because sometimes you only get one play and you destroy it, she says. She also performs her fathers songs to audiences, young and old, that may never have heard them previously. Late this month she is bound to China by invitation of the state government to play a festival. (We can make enough noise and give them a Hey, Good Lookin, she says with a laugh.)

With his death, Hank invented the musicians archetype of living fast and dying young. But the Mothers Best shows push back. The singers playful banter with his band, knowledge of current headlines and biting humor suggests a star capable of illuminating audiences even between songs. The recordings are especially poignant knowing he was in the throes of major back pain that he tried to remedy, first with morphine and alcohol, and later that year with surgery at Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville.

Williams says the general image of her dad so lonely, so drugged out, a total alcoholic is tiring. Nonsense. This guy is in the studio first thing in the morning and he sounds pretty damn chipper to me.

Im not saying he didnt take pills or drink, but I just cant fathom it was to the extent they say. People that abuse alcohol cant write songs that have the impact that his did. When you look at what he accomplished in those last three years, she says, her words trailing off. Then a question in awe: How did that guy do that?